DailyDirt: Flying Weapons

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

If there's a way to make a weapon more mobile, the military has probably tried it. Bat bombs were created during World War II, but after spending a couple million dollars on development, the project was cancelled. Here are just a few more modern examples of flying weapons that are currently under development.

Look its a blimp!

MovieBadguy: Look there is a surveillance blimp.
MovieBadGuy'sNotsobrightasistant: What should we do about it?
MovieBadguy:I don't know, what vulnerabilities could a balloon the length of a football field have?
MovieBadGuy'sNotsobrightasistant: I don't know, it seems impossible.
MovieBadguy: You idiot. Go get me a sling shot and a penny nail. I swear some times you are too dumb to work here. But you work for fish heads so I can't complain.

Re: There's a reason blimps stopped being used in warfare after WWI.

Airships, on the other hand, notwithstanding their presenting a large, slow-moving, low-altitude target, full of flammable hydrogen gas in soft, unarmoured bags, proved surprisingly hard to shoot down. You had to punch an awful lot of holes in them before the leaks became really serious.

Re: Re: Re: There's a reason blimps stopped being used in warfare after WWI.

The Hindenburg used hydrogen instead of helium because the US had a corner on the market. Making hydrogen(known to be volatile) the only viable option.

Also since the actual tanks are in closed in cells that are designed to be stronger then the skin, the likely of shooting one down is pretty minimal as you would need to hit one or more of the tanks.

The skin is just to make it pretty and help with aero dynamics. Just be easier to shoot out its engines. Then if the blimp is occupied you have prisoners for bartering. Else, just steal all the electronics out and find a vulnerability. You could theoretically use a strong enough emp cannon, but there is bound to be more shielding from rf interference then on the ground. To much risk for stray signals getting a direct hit.

Uncanny

Holy Bat Bomb!!!! The government chose nukes instead :-)

I remember watching a special on The History Channel about different weapons in WWII. The bat bomb was filled with honeycomb trays that telescoped out at a predetermined altitude to wake the bats and let them fly away. They implanted a timing device and an incindiary bomb inside the bats.

Now as most everyone knows, bats love flying into rafters and whatnot. When they ran the test on a mockup on a Japanese suburban neighborhood, the bats flew straight into the houses which burnt to a crisp. Even some of the houses on base caught on fire.

The test was so successful that if the Atom Bomb had not been in testing stages, our loveable bat bomb would have been used.